Shot Caller (2017): Bleak, raw, intense and grim movie about a guy who does time after accidentally killing his best friend while driving intoxicated, and ends up with a prison gang forcing him to a life of major crime outside the walls. Best movie of 2017 for me so far. 9/10

The Postman 4/10Looks like nobody was directing this movie. It also makes you wonder how many times Costner was ready to ruin his career on post apocalypse movies in the span of 2 years. Anyway, the film has its moments and could have been great. Its influence on later post apocalyptic works, most notably the video game/interactive film and masterpiece The Last Of Us, is hard to deny.

Rick & Morty Season 3 Episodes 1-7Greatest TV show on air by far. In season 3, one every two episodes is close from being a masterpiece. Episode 7 is a true masterpiece: 6 full movies in 22 minutes that tell a whole societal and philosophical story, all of it on top of fart jokes. Absolutely brilliant.

Agora (2009) A great movie you probably never heard of. A historical drama set in Alexandria, 391 AD, Roman Egypt.

The Library of Alexandria repository of the civilized world's knowledge. Hypatia teaches astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy. She was,the world’s leading mathematician and astronomer, at the time, the only woman for whom such claim can be made.

Yôsô (1963) - 7/10. Just when I'd thought I'd seen all the interesting chanbara out there . . . I discovered this today on Youtube. Kind of a Japanese Rasputin story with bits of Chinese sorcery and maybe even a whiff of Dragonwyck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXADzgekb-w

« Last Edit: September 15, 2017, 11:05:51 AM by dave jenkins »

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That's what you get, Drink, for not appreciating the genius of When You Read This Letter.

White Of The Eye (1987): David Keith is the prime suspect in a multiple murder investigation in rural Arizona. Plot-wise it's not very surprising, it's quite slow and more time is spent on Keith and his wife Cathy Moriarty and their slowly deteriorating relationship than the investigation or the murders (only 2 are shown) but it's strangely intriguing with gorgeous cinematography and Keith and Moriarty are both excellent. 7+/10

Watched this on the Arrow UK blu-ray. Looking forward to diving into the feature length docu on ill-fated director Donald Cammell, who made just 4 feature films in 25 years before ending his own life in 1996 (a year after his last movie got re-edited/butchered by its producers before release).

Jeremy Renner plays a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officer, who hunts predatory animals on the Wind River Indian reservation in snowy Wyoming. Renner himself is married to an Indian woman, and his in-laws, with whom he is close, live on the reservation. (There's a small backstory about how Renner is estranged (or possibly divorced?) from his wife, possibly due to a traumatic incident that happened several years earlier when their daughter died.) Renner is comfortable among the Wind River Indians.

One day, while hunting a family of mountain lions on the reservation – way out in the snowy mountains, where only snowmobiles can go – he finds a dead teenaged girl. The girl had been raped and died a horrific death. He knows the girl; she was friends with his daughter.

A murder on an Indian reservation is a federal case, so the FBI is called. An FBI officer (Elizabeth Olsen) is sent over from the regional office in Nevada. She shows up wearing nothing but a blue FBI jacket, and is promptly informed by Renner and a local Indian police officer (Graham Greene) that if she tries heading out to the mountains in that jacket, she'll be dead in five minutes. Olsen has the expertise and resources of the FBI, but she is way out of her element on the reservation; moreover, as an officer of the law, she has rules and procedures she has to follow. Renner knows the area well and, let's say, can bend a law or two. The two team up to solve the case.

This movie was written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, the screenwriter of Hell or High Water and Sicario.

Olsen is good; Greene is very good in a supporting role; Renner is great. Don't be surprised if Renner gets an Oscar nomination.

The material is pretty good; the movie is nice to look at, but somehow, I just feel that more could have been done with this it to spruce it up, the action is sparse, it's sort of in a small way like Hell or High Water in that regard.

I saw the movie in Kips Bay with Miss Hong Kong; she keeps asking to go to movies although she hardly understands English. Every few minutes I typed an explanation of what was going on through Google Translate, and she seemed to be enjoying herself I had one of the Kips Bay screening rooms with reclining seats, and the big screen, so the experience is always somewhat enjoyable no matter the movie

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Below are a few reviews:

The first two reviews are from when this movie premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January:

It's the end of May-beginning of July, 1944, aka a few days before D-Day. Everyone knows the Allies are about to invade France. On what day? And is the invasion going to be at Calais or Normandy?

James Garner is a high-ranking military intelligence official, who has been involved in the discussions. He knows the answer. When he flies out to neutral Lisbon to meet with a spy, he is drugged and flown to Germany. The Germans know that Garner has the answers they are seeking, but they also know that he has been trained to resist any torture they can dream up. They have to get the info out of him, and torture won't work ... but trickery may.

The Germans have dreamed up a big scheme for moments like these: By the time Garner wakes up a few hours later from his drug-induced coma, his hair has been dyed gray, his skin has been aged by a special medical process, drops have been placed into his eyes to make him farsighted and unable to read without glasses, and there is a Stars and Stripes newspaper on his nightstand dated 1950. The hospital compound is staffed by German soldiers with perfect American accents, American flags are flying, as is the flag of the Allied forces occupying postwar Germany. Yes, the Germans are making Garner believe that he has woken up six years later, that the Allies have won the war, and that he is in a U.S. military hospital in occupied, postwar Germany. This is the only way to get Garner to "talk" – to have him believe that the war is over, and to have him casually mention how the last thing he remembers was planning the invasion of ... Normandy ... voila!

I don't think I am spoiling anything by telling you that the suspense lies in when and how Garner will see through the ruse, and how he will then try to make the Germans believe that the information he has been giving them is really bullshit.

As soon as I saw the screenplay credits – based on, among other things, a story by Roald Dahl – I knew that something would be going on here Obviously, even by the standards of spy stories, this plot is a little way out there, but the movie can be decent entertainment.

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There are three types of people in the world, my friend: those who can add, and those who can't.

The Nile Hilton Incident (2017): Based partly on a true story and set in 2011 just days before the Arab Spring protests began there, this Egyptian neo-noir centers around a corrupt police detective who investigates the murder of a singer at the Nile Hilton hotel, but is quickly taken off the case once it's clear a wealthy, and untouchable, businessman/politician might be involved. Pretty good, nice cinematography and decent performances. 7+/10

I got up several hours before my normal Sunday routine, to catch this in the local arthouse cinema (only 2 others decided to do the same thing...). No regrets tho. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfK3yXo389k

Buffalo, what was at one time our Frontier, analogous to The Stick's or The Wild West. It's the capital of the "other" New York. Upstate. "The Queen City" it spawned "daredevils," and pioneered steam powered grain elevators, and what could be a more iconic symbol of The Great American Fly-Over Country. You could probably say Buffalo is the prototype typical Mid Western/Great Lake, U.S. city.

Greg Stuhr and Jenna Rickers script works into The American Side, in a similar fashion to Robert Towne's Chinatown L.A. water wars some Queen City historical atmosphere. In this scenario the early 1900s hydropower, the electrical invention history of genius Nikola Tesla, Buffalo and Niagara Falls is woven into a tale that bridges to the 21st century. This happens in the form of the missing pages of Tesla's notebook which may contain valuable inventions, or of those left unfinished, or just hinted at i.e. free energy systems, invisibility, death rays, etc.

The American Side is a good example of what can be accomplished in an fly over country production. It's nice to see the the middle of the country again in a Noir with some cinematic memory. Greg Stuhr carries most of the load, he impressed, with the rest of the cast putting in good but pretty much extended cameos of various lengths, one standout was Norm Sham who stole a couple of scenes.

For Noir & Detective enthusiasts it's a winner. Screencaps are from the Sony Pictures 2016 DVD. Almost a low rent Chinatown. 7/10

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"When you feel that rope tighten on your neck you can feel the devil bite your ass"!

It looks like a mashup of previous films by Aronofsky, most notably Black Swan, Noah and The Fountain. It's also the most Lynchean film of Darren. Mother! starts like the modern take on Rosemary's Baby that the trailer wants you to believe it is, but the audience quickly learns to not take anything at face value as the film becomes increasingly metaphorical rather than rational, before descending into total madness for the last 30 minutes. The whole thing is filled with very dark humor, and you go from laughs to screams seamlessly.There isn't much I can tell without spoiling things, so just be aware you're gonna see a lot of scenes directly adapted from the Bible. It's not for everyone, it has many great moments as well as (some) cheesy ones. I much preferred the first half over the second one (Aronofsky seems more at ease filming intimity and tortured loners than more agitated settings) but that may change on a second watch.

Last but not least, I cannot believe RR hasn't been advertising the film for months on here.